Dr. John FitzGibbon presented a paper at the Council for European Studies Annual Conference in Washington DC entitled “Protest Movements and the Eurocrisis: Waves not Wave of Protest”.  Shortly afterward he was stateside again to present another paper, this entitled “Another Europe is Possible and the Evolution of Euroscepticism: The Emergence of Euroalternativism”.  Both papers were received very well and will shortly be submitted to leading international academic articles.  Additionally Dr. FitzGibbon’s panels were extremely well attended, as evidenced by the picture below!*

(*attendance may not have been for Dr. FitzGibbon but for MIT Professor Mark Franklin)

Dr David Bates, Dr Matthew Ogilvie and Emma Pole gave a paper ‘Occupy in Theory and Practice’ at the Alternative Futures and Popular Protest conference at Manchester Metropolitan University on 14 April 2014. The paper was based on a theoretically informed empirical analysis of the ‘official’ publications of the Occupy Movement, in Wall Street and London. Operationalising core concepts from the framing perspective within social movement theory, the paper analysed the strategic frames of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London. The paper then situated these frames within a broader macro-theoretical context of radical social movement traditions – from classical Marxism to post-Marxism and post-Anarchism.  The paper problematized the idea that Occupy London and Occupy Wall Street may be regarded as two expressions of the same movement, and in fact may well be responses to the global financial crisis emerging from quite distinct traditions.  The paper is part of a wider project, funded through the Research Impact Enhancement Fund (RIEF) at Canterbury Christ Church University.  Those interested in this project should contact one of the key researchers directly.

Dr Andre Barrinha was in Coimbra (Portugal) for the VII Portuguese Political Science Association Conference from the 14^th to the 16^th April. He had a busy schedule, moderating a session on Middle Eastern politics, presenting a communication on the privatisation of European defence and participating in a roundtable on International Relations in Portugal. He was also elected as a member of the new directive body of the IR Section, as a representative of Portuguese IR academics in the world.

Dr Soeren Keil has been a Visiting Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona in April 2014, where he taught a Master’s course on Current Research in Diverse Democracy. Additionally, he has just been appointed a Visiting Researcher at the Chair for International Politics of the University of Passau in Germany. This competitive appointment is connected to some joint research with Prof Bernhard Stahl and some teaching involvement at the University of Passau.

Dr Mark Bennister was co-Director of a workshop at the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions in Salamanca, Spain over Easter. The joint sessions are regarded as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the ECPR. CCCU has recently become a member of the ECPR. The workshop, proposed and organised by Dr Bennister with Dr Ben Worthy (Birkbeck) and Prof Paul ‘t Hart (Utrecht) discussed Leadership Capital and challenge of measuring political leadership. Participants included Emeritus Professor Jean Blondel, Prof James Walter (Monash, Australia), Prof John Gaffney (Aston, UK) and other participants from France, Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Hungary. 18 academic papers were presented and discussed over the 4 days and publications are expected to result from the workshop. A blog site has been launched to act as a research hub at http://measuringleadership.wordpress.com/.  The workshop dinner – well deserved after 4 days solid in the same room!

Proof that Prof Jean Blondel (on the right) took part!

In addition Dr Mark Bennister has been appointed co-convenor of the Political Studies Association Political Leadership Specialist Group. More details of the Group’s activity can be found at http://politicalleadership.org/